Nowadays, society has advanced in the field of technology and discoveries. This technological advancement is due to a significant and ever-expanding growth of infrastructure such as cables etc. It mushroomed in particular between 1994 and 2013.[1] On the one hand, the increasing potential of social media and personal devices has facilitated social interaction, on the other inappropriate use of technology represents an imminent risk in such a way that these devices could be more threatening than a weapon. People exchange information on the internet on a daily basis, and the influence that news has on users is extraordinary. Publishing some materials sometimes may shed a light on some illicit activities previously kept hidden that are of public concern.
In the last decade, there have been two important and exhaustive examples of this phenomenon: “Data gate” and “Wikileaks”. A new word has since been introduced and soon started to be known and spread worldwide: “whistleblower”, which is referable to those individuals who acted to protect higher interests at their own expense.
A whistleblower is an individual, within an organization, who has witnessed and decides to disclose some unfair and illegal behaviors, more generally any wrongdoing, that is of public interest and that could potentially damage a consistent number of people. Besides, there are two different types of whistleblowers: internal and external.
Internal whistleblowers are individuals, such as employees, who decide to denounce/report these outrageous actions (fraud, indiscipline, and misconduct) to senior officers of an organization. To give an example those misconduct could be communicated to the Head of human resources or the CEO. [2]
Moreover, a whistleblower can also be referred to as “external”: this figure either reports the wrongdoing to the judicial authority (for example higher government officials or police) or broadcast everything on social media in such a way that its divulgation will cover a wider network. [3]
What’s the point of divulgating reserved information? Information and power are strictly connected and some secrets may be inconvenient for the political image and integrity of a state. It is important to stress that public audience has the right to know what is going on with certainty.
DATAGATE
In June 2013 “The Guardian” published a consistent number of articles, among which, a secret and private collection of data belonging to the NSA (national security agency) were included. The leading role was played by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee, who leaked classified information from NSA. The incidents resulted in the unauthorized electronic surveillance of US citizens by the USA and other alliances. This famous scandal was defined as ‘Datagate’. NSA broke privacy rules several times according to what was revealed by Snowden. The man had been ultimately given asylum in Russia.[4]
The material which was published revealed the existence of monitoring programs for communication. The most relevant aspect was research on phone records revealing an unauthorized interception of phone calls and emails. Furthermore, the authorities found a program called PRISM used by the NSA to have access to the communication of Americans and foreign nationals in US territory, together with a strong collaboration of the biggest IT companies. The program was legally authorized by the Foreign Surveillance Act which has been emendated many times. To start the surveillance/control over a specific target, the authorization of a specific and secret US surveillance court was required. The legitimacy of the court was given by the above-mentioned FISA if the selected target was an individual whose origin was not American and as such, he was a foreigner. Afterward, the court was ruled it unconstitutional.[5]
The scale of NSA’s data collection has been ambiguous so far and contrasting opinions on the matter have emerged: on the one hand, some people support its legitimacy as a way to fight against terrorist attacks; on the other, such a program could violate and infringe civilians’ liberty.[6] [7]
WIKILEAKS
Another leak episode that has gone down in history as the biggest leak in the world is the “collateral murder” case involving WikiLeaks. First of all, what is WikiLeaks? WikiLeaks is a non-profit organization and website dedicated to exposing secret information, which primarily focuses on the action of government entities.
WikiLeaks' ambition is to expose the wrongdoings in the context of oppressive governments around the world, but it has expanded to include advocacy and the enforcement of general government transparency and openness. This objective is achieved through the technical and social exploitation of government systems to obtain access to restricted material. [8]
In practical terms, WikiLeaks is a whistleblowing platform founded by Julian Assange with the aim to provide whistleblowers with a domain to publish their cases to the public and preserve their identity.
“They started out saying they’re an open-source intelligence agency or an intelligence agency for the people” said James Ball, an ex-WikiLeaks staffer, and added: “Same as the CIA or [Britain's] GCHQ find secrets for their governments, the idea was WikiLeaks would get them for everyone.” [9]
We are talking about material documents: to name a few, confidential documents were uploaded on the bombing in Yemen, the Tibetan uprising in China in 2008, extrajudicial executions by the police in Kenya, on the treatment of prisoners in the Guantanamo prison camp, on money laundering by great politicians and businessmen, on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
We could consider WikiLeaks as a great "Pandora's box", a large virtual container of information and dossiers, which, once opened, could have revealed the greatest secrets of world governments and changed the balance of force and cooperation between states. [10]
WIKILEAKS-COLLATERAL MURDER
A team of two US Apache AH-64 helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, on the morning of July 12, 2007, shot Iraqi individuals, some of them civilians and unarmed.
The air attack is divided into 3 moments:
In the first phase, American soldiers shoot and kill a group of Iraqi men walking along an avenue. Among them were two Iraqi war correspondents who worked for Reuters (an international news organization), Saeed Chmagh (who will later die in hospital), and Namir Noor-Eldeen, the latter an Iraqi freelance photojournalist whose camera was mistaken by the Americans for a weapon.
In the second phase, the Americans opened fire against another group of civilians who were heading in a black SUV towards Chmagh to try to get him to safety. The Americans shoot in the direction of the black SUV to neutralize the targets, apparently without realizing that there were also two children inside, who were seriously injured by the air attack.
Last phase of the attack: the American soldiers having seen two men equipped with AM-47 entering a building, in the belief that they were only offending them, fired missiles which ended up causing damage to other unarmed men as well.
The video footage of the Apache helicopter killing 12 civilians in Baghdad was passed to WikiLeaks in May 2010 by Bradley E. Manning (now Chelsea Manning, having changed sex), a 22-year-old US military intelligence analyst.
In March 2011, the US Army charged Manning with 22 counts relating to the unauthorized possession and distribution of more than 720,000 secret diplomatic and military documents [11]. On August 21, 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years of imprisonment. On January 17, 2017, former President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence to a total of 7 years in prison, and finally was released on May 17, 2017.
All things considered, the above-mentioned data leaks are the portrayal of a new scenario that has taken more and more ground in the last decade: an innovative and, sometimes harmful, use of technology and personal devices. Whistleblowers by reporting wrongdoings could go against the principle of loyalty they were committed to. However, they act in such a way that their new commitment is towards the entire society, and denouncing misconduct is the initial step to guarantee meaningful protection.
In light of these circumstances, and in particular of the significant protective role that whistleblowers play with respect to the right to know and the right to the truth of the society, what we should ask ourselves is: "Are whistleblowers actively protected by legislation? Although several countries, in particular those operating in the European context, are working towards this, this still remains a work-in-progress.
Bibliography
[2,3]Definition of 'Whistleblower'. The Economic Times.
[4,5] Edward Snowden documents show NSA broke privacy rules: The US National Security Agency (NSA) broke privacy rules and overstepped its legal authority thousands of times in the past two years, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden. BBC. August 16, 2013.
[1,6] Adam Blenford, Christine Jeavans. After Snowden: How vulnerable is the internet?. BBC News. January 27,2014
[7] Ballerini, Clerici, De Pra, Indovina, Pedrazzini. Informatica per giurisprudenza. Egea, 2019.
[8] Ethan Lozano, Alan Joyce, Robert Schiemann, Adam Ting, Dominique Yahyavi. Wikileaks and Whistleblowing.
[9] Francis Whittaker. What is Wikileaks? Everything you need to know. April 30, 2018
[10] Martina Ratta. WikiLeaks: il controverso caso “Collateral Murder”. 7 November, 2019
[11] BBC. Chelsea Manning: Wikileaks source and her turbulent life. 16 May 2017
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